Thursday, October 22, 2009

University of Michigan gets stem cell grants, Sean Morrison can’t help but lie

The Detroit Free Press has an AP story which is reporting that the University of Michigan has “received 13 federal stimulus grants worth $6.8 million for stem cell research.” The AP story then proceeds to act like the grants are because of Proposal 2, a referendum passed in 2008 to legalize the killing of human embryos for research in Michigan, by claiming these grants are “a sign of the state’s growing clout since voters last year eased restrictions in the emerging field that seeks treatments and cures for numerous diseases.”

Except that 12 of the grants have nothing to do with human embryonic stem cells and the only grant that does would have been legal before Proposal 2 since it doesn’t require Sean Morrison to kill human embryos just use the embryonic stem cells they already had. The University of Michigan press release even notes that Morrison’s study “would have been permitted prior to the passage of Proposal 2."

Morrison intentionally misleads the reporter by saying, “The passage of Proposal 2 made it possible for millions of dollars in new resources to flow into the University of Michigan to be invested into ... stem cell research.” Except that the University of Michigan was getting millions of dollars for embryonic stem cell research 5 years before Proposal 2 passed.

Morrison knows this. Yet he has to act like Proposal 2 actually did something more than allow him to kill human embryos. He knows cures from embryonic stem cells aren’t coming anytime soon so he has to act like all the ridiculous hoopla about the importance of passing Proposal 2 has some grounding.

Federal dollars can’t be used to fund the direct killing of human embryos because the Dickey Amendment still stands so the passage of Proposal 2 did nothing to get the University of Michigan these grants and Morrison knows it.